


As It Should Be

by beaubete



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M, One-Sided Relationship, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't care.  She doesn't see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As It Should Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eatingcroutons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eatingcroutons/gifts).



> For the lovely, lovely eatingcroutons, without whom I still wouldn't have seen any of this wonderful show. 
> 
> Takes place between 1x02-1x03, though it could easily fit anywhere within the first three episodes.

She doesn’t know if he can’t see it or if it just doesn’t matter to him, so she tucks her head down and doesn’t say, but it’s killing her.  This need, this urge to prove herself—it’s killing her, and Freddie doesn’t care. 

This is it; it’s her chance, the only one she’s got, the only one she’ll get if she fails now, and she can see the entire future played before her now like a map to Fairyland.  On the right, gleaming and shining, the BBC looms ahead like a veritable glittering city, and there she is in the center of it: accomplished.  Respected.  Producer of an incredible news show, and so what if it’s a little bit lonely now?  So _what_ if she’s still going on dates for the dinner and waiting by the phone for calls that don’t come?  That’s only for now.  Somewhere in the fuzzy distance there may be a family, a shadowy figure and a child—just one, she thinks, and only once she’s settled in and is completely happy.  Which she will be, she’s sure.  She’ll be the blissful kind of happy where other women’s charm will simply roll over her as a duck shaking off water and she will be incredibly smug, because they are welcome to simper and charm and pander to men in order to achieve meaningless goals, but Bel herself is going for power, prestige, and the right to prove to the world that she’s as good as any man—no, _better_ , and once she’s atop that gleaming tower, she’s going to hide her tracks and show them all that it is a matter of fact that she should be there.  A matter of God-given right and responsibility.

And to the left there’s another clear road: money spent and opportunities wasted and everything crashed around her ears, she paints on another inch of makeup, shimmies into another tight dress and listens to another series of promises to call; accepts dates for dinner and chooses restaurants where the candlelight will hide the fact that she’s nearly 30 and armed with nearly none of those maternal instincts that bastard from Westminster is always sneering at her about.  She doesn’t want to be married right now, but someday she might—someday it might be important.  Someday she might be her mum, though even the thought of it twists in her stomach like the day after a party when she’s had too much to drink and wakes soggy in yesterday’s dress and her shoes carefully placed at the end of her bed.  It’s not a thing to think about, not at all; she boards up that path, doesn’t look at it.

But there in the middle—that path to Fairyland, wild and untamed—that’s her friendship with Freddie.  It’s dangerous, narrow, crooked and full of hurts, and it leads her to a place where she is unwelcome, unhappy, unfulfilled but entertained.  She can’t predict it, can’t see past the first few turns, and while it seems open enough now, it’s just a short while until it is dark and full of wild.  Sometimes it’s cottage fairies beckoning, their gossamer wings and sweet, childish faces cheery and friendly, but more often it’s other things that promise one hell of a party and the possibility—likelihood—of waking up alone in the woods hung over and abandoned.  The worst is knowing that even starting down that path will forever bar the other two from her, knowing that Freddie will never let her have or keep the good or the bad; committing to that middle road means going far from the things she knows and wants, and oh, though she’s been toeing her way along that entrance something’s always held her back.  He’s inconstant, and she’s finding herself drawn, pulled away a bit more every day.  Each disappointment between them is a stone laid against the edge of that path, and even as he shoves at them from the other side, they’re beginning to build up, walling him away from her.

No, she loves Freddie.  He’s her dearest friend, for all his ridiculous talk and self-absorption.  But they’re not on the same path anymore.  He doesn’t want to be.

::

He doesn’t know if she can’t see it or if it just doesn’t matter to her, so he tucks his head down and doesn’t say, but it’s killing him.  This need, this urge to show her how good he can be—it’s killing him, and Bel doesn’t care. 

It’s like a wound, open and raw between his ribs; he wonders how he can bleed to death for years and no one will notice.  No one will see, but Freddie sees—sees the world for how it is and how it should be, laid over one another like layers of tissue, and everywhere he looks there are more things that are wrong, more things that ought to be different.  Ought to be better.  A man can be stabbed in the street and no one will care if he’s not white, and every day the world hurtles closer to that cataclysmic war that will end it all; a man can wish for something his whole life and never have it, can spend his whole life pressed against the window from the outside with the Ghost of Christmas Never-Was, watching as everything he’s ever wanted was handed to someone by privilege of birth.  And of all the things a man can do to improve his station, there’s no way to fight that one, is there?  Sometimes you’re born Irish, born black, born poor.  Sometimes you’re not.

And Freddie looks, too, at the things that people don’t see, because that’s the best way to find the things that are worth having: slightly used, a little damage and nobody wants it.  Perfectly good lamps going to waste because of the color of the enamel; perfectly good girl going to seed because a banker can’t appreciate that he’s got the best one Freddie’s ever seen—and Freddie doesn’t give a damn about the ones out there that are supposed to be better.  The devil is in the details, and he will never tell her how long he hunted for that lamp, how many charity shops and storefronts and magazine ads before he found the right one, the perfect one, sitting slightly used and left alone, reminding him so much of Bel his stomach had hurt with it. He’s never been one for passing up good for vaguely better, anyway.  If she’d ever asked him his philosophy, it would be “good enough is good enough”, but what she wouldn’t understand is how rare “good” is these days.  In a world dark and smudged with bad, with corrupt and evil and murderous, “good” shines through like a beacon, cutting and dazzling until she’s all he can see.

He thinks maybe he could have given it up for her, could have stomached another thirty-five years in the back room producing snippets of film for somebody else’s show, if he’d had her.  If she’d ever been more than an ephemeral wisp of smoke, as thin as tissue and just as easily moved away by the wind of his movements toward her.  Perhaps not; as much as he loves—he tucks her hair behind her ears and slips off her shoes so that she can sleep comfortably, snoring a little bit in a way that pulls a stupid, fond smile to his face, adjusts her pillow and smooths the blankets and imagines waking up beside her just once, as if he could give up after just once—her, the rest of it’s important, too, because she’s leaving.  Especially because she’s leaving, in increments slow and subtle and painful.  And when he’s angry, alone in his room remembering Hector's smug smile and flubbed interviews and accusations that it's _Freddie_ who doesn't belong and listening to his Dad putter around down the hall in a daze of doddering old age that makes him sick and furious, he can tell himself that she’s just the same as all of them, that she doesn’t see underneath the ugly yellow paint, either, to the delicate arched goose neck and sturdy base.

No, he loves Bel.  She’s one of the few constants in his life: kingdoms will fall and rivers will rise and Freddie will love Bel with the kind of ache that makes him press his fist against his stomach like a bruise forming.  But she’s never going to see things that aren’t obvious.  She’s not looking.


End file.
